I'm procrastinating at work currently, so my mind was wandering to everything the Government has done over the past few years which were meant to bring down prices, but either did and the decrease was eaten by inflation or was just all faff with no real benefit to every days kiwis.

1 - Petrol market investigation.

Investigated started in 2019, resulting in the Fuel Industry Act 2020. Since then Megan Woods questioned extremely high margins in 2022. And in September 2023, Comcom issued a 'please explain' over price discrepancies. So while the price may be worse than it currently is - There doesn't seem to be much in the way of either petrol companies lowering their prices or even watching their behaviour after the new act was introduced.

And now of course - Fuel companies increase profit margins in cost-of-living crisis Oct 17 2023

2 - Energy market investigation.

In 2019, the Government investigated energy prices and forced removal of low fixed charge tariffs and  prompt payment discounts. Since then of course energy prices have risen steadily and despite the lower users being forced to pay higher fees, overall the prices are still rising steadily.

In 2019 Meridian Energy were found to have abused their market power by dumping water instead of using it and allegedly caused over $60 millions of excess energy prices. In December 2023 the Commerce Commission flatly refused to investigate Meridian citing a lack of resources despite the Energy Authority officially confirming Meridian caused $80 million dollars and 600t of excess carbon damage to the economy and environment. 

And now of course - Meridian, Contact, Genesis and Mercury made a collective $2.7 billion in operating profits in the just ended financial year. - Sep 1 2023

3 - Grocery market investigation.

In November 2020 the Comcom were asked to asked to investigate supermarket competition and found unequivocally that they were abusing their market share to make excess profit margins. Their results: Every day, the major supermarkets are making more than $1 million in excess profits" because of "high prices, high profits and high barriers to enter the market," it says.  

And now of course: Price of common foods soars more than 50% in NZ

So I ask you all what do you think:

Are we fortunate our Government is doing something at all?
Have the investigations resulted in better prices for kiwis?

Or were they a total whitewash and handwringing exercise designed to provide the appearance of the Govt doing something?